* Stampedes common at Indian religious events
(Adds new deaths, detail)

By Sharat Pradhan

ALLAHABAD, India, Feb 11 (Reuters) - A stampede at a railway
station in northern India killed at least 36 Hindu pilgrims on
Sunday, the busiest day of the world's largest religious
festival at which some 30 million had gathered to wash away
their sins in the sacred Ganges river.

Twenty-seven of the dead were women, mostly elderly and
poor. An eight-year-old girl was also crushed to death. A
Reuters witness saw a woman weeping at the train station,
surrounded by six bodies dressed in brightly coloured saris.

Up to 100 million pilgrims and Hindu ascetics are expected
to attend the two-month long Kumbh Mela festival, which comes to
an end next month.

It is held every 12 years in a temporary city covering an
area larger than Athens, spread over a wide sandy river bank in
Allahabad at the point where the Ganges and Yamuna rivers meet a
third mythical river.

The festival grows in size every time it is held and is
considered the world's largest temporary gathering of people.
Officials said some 30 million visited the site on Sunday,
considered the most auspicious day to bathe in the river.

Officials gave contradictory versions of what caused the
crush. A railway official told Reuters police had been using
batons to control the crowd, triggering panic. A state
government official said a footbridge handrail collapsed,
sending people slipping down the stairs and starting a stampede.

A spokesman for Indian railways said authorities had found
36 bodies and 30 people were injured. The injured were being
treated at hospitals in Allahabad.

"Since there were huge crowds and a lot of panic, it took
time before the bodies could be extricated," said another
official, R. M. Srivastava, the top security official in the
state of Uttar Pradesh, where the festival is held.

Deadly stampedes are common at India's vast pilgrimages and
religious festivals. In 2008, 145 people died when a panicking
crowd pushed people over a ravine near the Himalayan temple of
Naina Devi.

Thousands of police and volunteers are used for crowd
control during the Kumbh Mela, manning the river bank when the
pilgrims and naked, dreadlocked ascetics dash into the water to
bathe.

The festival has its roots in a Hindu tradition that says
the god Vishnu wrested a golden pot from demons containing the
nectar of immortality.

In a 12-day fight for possession, four drops fell to earth,
in the cities of Allahabad, Haridwar, Ujain and Nasik. Every
three years a Kumbh Mela is held at one of these spots, with the
festival at Allahabad the holiest of them all.

More than 2,000 years old, the festival is a meeting point
for Hindu "sadhu" ascetics, some of whom live in forests or
Himalayan caves and who belong to dozens of inter-related
congregations. The sects have their own administration and elect
leaders, but are also known for violent clashes among
themselves.
(Reporting by Sharat Pradhan; Editing by Neil Fullick)